Upcoming: Porsche 911 Carrera GTS

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The Porsche 911 is the best ever example of doing the wrong thing long enough that it becomes the right thing. Putting the engine in the rear end of a sports car is stupid idea, it's the best way to get killed if you overstep the limits of the car's handling abilities by even a little bit. Porsche decided that they wouldn't let something as minor as a really bad idea get in the way of making a great sports car.

After spending decades putting the engine into the wrong end of their cars, Porsche has made the current generation of 911s some of the best handling cars ever made, not to mention what is possibly the most iconic shape of any sports car. Quite an impressive achievement for an ass-engine upside-down bathtub. Porsche has always offered a variety of different trim levels for the 911. Their effort to make sure that there is a trim level that's just right for everybody has resulted in a confusing mess of letter and number designations.

This mess will be getting even more confusing with the addition of the Carrera GTS for the 2011 model year. Porsche decided that there was a gap in performance (and price) between the Carrera S and the 911 GT3, and this is the slot that the GTS will be filling. The body style will be the same as the Carrera 4, although, as you would expect from Porsche, you would have to look pretty hard to be able to tell it apart from other Carreras. Horsepower is just as by-the-book Porsche, with the GTS's 408 sitting comfortably between the 385 of the Carrera S and the 435 of the GT3.